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Grindhouse: Drive In, Blood Out #4 Review

What’s more fun than watching a town get invaded by a horde of blood-sucking ticks? Watching Deputy Garcia kill them all. And Grindhouse: Drive In, Blood Out: Blood Lagoon #4 does an excellent job of capturing Garcia in all her murderous glory.

The official description from Dark Horse:

When ravenous monster ticks creep forth from the disgusting and mysterious blood lagoon, only Garcia and her posse can defend the residents of a small southern burg from the enormous arachnids! Don’t miss the gore-engorged conclusion to Blood Lagoon!

After a meteorite crashes in a remote Texas fishing hole, a nearby town suddenly gets invaded by giant ticks that suck the life out of any living creature they encounter. As most avid sci-f- readers would guess, the meteorite catalyzed this plague, infecting regular insects with other-worldly properties. Luckily for everyone involved (including the readers), Deputy Garcia, writer Alex de Campi’s kick-ass protagonists from her last Grindhouse run, was in town to support her friend as he came out to her bigoted father.

Reader’s hoping for a continuation, or at least resolution, to the emotional front story de Campi started in issue #3, will be sorely disappointed with the direction things go in issue #4 — or not. While it’s true that the emotional set-up gets (nearly) abandoned in issue #4, the blood and gore get center stage and isn’t that what Gringhose is all about? I’d like to tell you issue #4 is more than just a killing rampage, but it’s the killing that sticks out the most. Yes, Deputy Garcia returns to the fishing hole to see how the meteorite is doing what it does, and yes, we get a small moment between Garcia’s friend his bigoted father that might read like resolution and acceptance, but really, #4 is more about crafting the identity of de Campi’s new favorite heroine – and she does this beautifully. Garcia is sexy, strong, and loves to kill monsters. While I’d still argue that this mini-run could have benefited from a little more attention to the emotional arc de Campi tried to so carefully stage in issue #3, for a comic that has the conjugation of “Blood” twice in the title, this issue certainly delivered.

Artist Chris Peterson does a marvelous job of matching de Campi’s gory writing, with gory images; his art is sharp, bright, and self- aware — check out the last few pages and you’ll know exactly what I mean. Peterson *knows* he’s drawing for a genre that originated on the big screen.